Skipper is reading in the living room. I'm washing dishes in the kitchen.

Skipper: Mom! I have a predicament!
Me: Yeah?
Skipper: What's a predicament?
Me: Um... a problematic situation that you need to solve.
Skipper: My predicament was that I didn't know what predicament meant.

I think Skipper's brain is going to explode.

Skipper has learned a handful of Japanese words this week. I just picked her up from school, and on the walk home, she said "Mom, does Japanese have pictures in it instead of words?" so I promised to look up the history of Japanese characters when I got home.

And I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system and oh my lord. And that led me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language and apparently this is EXTREMELY complicated.

Out it was.

I love the way my daughters talk. I love the way they pick up vocabulary, and the way they're always asking me what words mean, and I love hearing them deploy words as they go about their lives. They're both very  verbal kids, interested in narrative, eager to accumulate and use new words, and they both talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. One of Skipper's current favorite activities is sitting down with a picture book, preferably a newly-acquired library book she's never had read to her, and "reading" a completely invented story about the pictures. As she makes up the story, she falls back on classic oral storytelling techniques like repetition - "The sun is rising. It rises to rise! It glows to glow." - and it's pretty hilarious to listen to her. (From the next room; she doesn't like to have an audience for this activity.) They use good words with each other, too. Duchess suggested the other day that Skipper should "shed one of the blankets" she was wearing in their pretend narrative game (orphans escaping an evil orphanage, as usual), and Skipper referred casually to a "makeshift" set-up for a game. Skipper recently called me her "scornful mama!" and then, to my relief, asked me what "scornful" means.

My favorite recent language moment with the girls, though, happened about a month ago, when Duchess unexpectedly lost a tooth. (Molars, apparently, don't do the prolonged wiggling-around thing that front teeth do.) Her note to the Tooth Fairy described how she didn't know her tooth was loose, and "I was eating dinner, and kapooie, out it was!"

I have discovered how to make a child smile for the camera. I will make a million dollars!

Skipper, in the photos below, is entertaining herself by saying "We are going to outer space! Outer peanut butter! Outer cheese! Outer FART! Outer butt cheeks! OUTER POOP!"

Stuff I Like

1) My boots. Oh, I love them. (In related news, it turns out that tights that aren't fifteen years old and ill-fitting are way, way more comfortable than tights that are.)
2) My new stand mixer. Oh, I love it. You should SEE it mixing stuff! You guys, it CUTS IN BUTTER FOR ME!
3) Skipper's new attitude toward preschool. Apparently being wrenched away from her routine for a week made her realize that her routine isn't all that bad, actually.
4) The internet. We have to hire a babysitter to cover the two days a week when Skipper's not in preschool, because I have a new (temporary, part-time) job,* and the internet is so great for this sort of thing. Remember how people used to put help wanted ads in the newspaper? How did people find babysitters before there was craigslist?
5) My new commitment to being a Tiger Mother for ten minutes a day. I'm pretty excited about this. Dutch is taking an after-school Spanish class two days a week, and she came home from her first class today whining about how she hated the class. She hates it because the teacher doesn't speak any English, and Dutch doesn't understand anything and IT'S SO HARD, MOM. I gave her a stern lecture about how learning is hard, and nothing worth having in this world comes easy** and blah bitty blah bitty blah blah blah. Later, Cook gave her the same lecture*** and then I decided that she would have to practice her Spanish vocabulary ten minutes a day. Tonight she painstakingly made seven flashcards, and memorized their contents. Rrrarr!
6) Our ten-year-old wooden drying rack. The sunshine is finished for the year here in Portland, and wet clothing hung outside will only get wetter.
7) Playdough.
8) Furniture slider pads
9) My bike helmet.


*Yeah, I got a job. It's an internship, actually, and it's a good thing, and I'm looking forward to it, but I'm just not very excited about it, somehow. I would have been quite excited about it two years ago. Now I'm so cynical about the prospect of it actually leading anywhere that I can't dig up much enthusiasm.


** Yes, those words came out of my mouth. I was amazed.


*** Except better. It was a little bit inspiring.

If only I had this kind of faith in myself.

Last night I was lying with Skipper, trying to con her into falling asleep (I do this by ignoring her and pretending to sleep myself, which often results in my actual sleeping), and she rolled over, kicking her blankets off. A few minutes later, she said "Mama, why my blankets fall off?" and I said grudgingly "I don't know." She thought for a minute and said cheerfully, "Maybe because me did sumfing AWESOME!!!"

This is how you know we're over-educated Portlanders.

Cook, Skipper and Dutch are doing a performance of The Tempest in our living room while I type this. Also, Skipper can identify sharrows.

Report card.

Yesterday I went to Dutch's parent-teacher conference. Dutch is apparently a model student, and the teacher had nothing but good things to say. "Whatever you're doing at home," she said "keep doing it."* She also presented us with a collection of "work samples" that included a fabulous drawing of a pegacorn, a "small moment" story about how happy Dutch was when Skipper was born - "I like my sister. She is fany. She is frenly."** - and an essay on trees - "I like trees. The tree ring shoes how old it is."

I knew she's doing well in school, but it was nice to hear the teacher telling me how pleased she is with Dutch as a student. We can worry about other stuff, instead.

*I consider that this gives me free license to continue doing things like yell "Stop singing that song! It's just pissing me off!"

**The teacher provided this as an example of how sophisticated Dutch is - apparently, a standard-issue AVERAGE kindergartener would just have said that he/she liked his/her sister, without any supporting explication. Of course, standard-issue kindergarteners apparently are not expected to be able to name all six basic shapes yet, and you have to admit that's a little bit sad.

Moving along

This is how Dutch celebrated her birthday:

1) Enjoying a celebratory breakfast and presents-opening before school

2) Wearing a paper crown that said her name and "6" on it all day at school. I joined her for lunch, and it was like being in the entourage of a celebrity - kids were calling out "Happy birthday, Dutch!" everywhere we went.

3) Going out for dinner to a local fast food joint* and eating a cheeseburger, french fries, and root beer.**

4) Falling asleep with her new doll nestled in a cardboard box beside the bed.

This is how Skipper celebrated Dutch's birthday:

1) Spending much of the day trying to get her hands on the new doll, and pointing at it while saying "Doll. MINE. Doll!!! MEEEE!"

2) Discovering how much she loves fast food. "Good. GOOD. MORE. MEEEEE!"

* I was able to look up the nutrition information of all my options beforehand online, and judiciously choose food that represented only one day's worth of calories and saturated fat, rather than two or three.

**Dutch is blessedly inexperienced with soda, and when I walked her up to the soda dispenser, she was paralyzed by all the options, so I let her try a sip of every one. She declared Coke, Mr Pibb, root beer, and Sprite all to be far superior to Fanta. (I love orange sodea. I also love grape soda, and cherry cola.)

Nicknames

Skipper, who's getting better at talking all the time, has pretty much mastered the names of some of Dutch's friends and can say them so clearly that even non-family can understand them. However, she still calls Dutch the same thing - "Dee-deuh"* - that she's been calling her since the time when she couldn't articulate much of anything at all. The nickname has stuck. This is how people end up 25 years old with their families still calling them Ta-Ta.

Of course, Skipper refers to herself only as "Me" (usually accompanied with a chest thump and a defiant glare), so she's got a ways to go, generally, on names. She put together her first real sentence last night - she said "Help... ME!"

*The only way this nickname resembles Dutch's actual name is in the number of syllables. How she got started with it is a mystery.

And waves of Dutch

This week, Dutch spontaneously used the words "gender" and "successful" in conversation.* She also announced that she is bored at school because she already knows everything. We're not sure if she's saying that because she's overheard** us expressing our dismay with her academic situation, or because it's actually true.

Also, she made her first request for Silly Bandz. This created an excellent opportunity to talk about fads, and she listened very carefully, said thoughtful things that indicated she understood exactly what I was trying to say,*** and about 14 hours later, she bought herself a pack of Silly Bandz.

*As in "I guess it's just a gender thing," said with a world-weary sigh.

**Dutch is a champion eavesdropper.

***Fads are usually harmless, but you should think carefully if you want to spend your time and money on them.

Maelstroms of Skipper

I just googled "my 18-month-old is horrible"* and got lots of useful hits. You see, my 18-month-old is HORRIBLE. Adorable, but also really, really horrible.

This is a sample of adorable (translations provided):

Me: Skipper, how was your day?

Skipper: Goot. (Good.)

Me: Did you play with your friends?

Skipper: Joppah! Jaypee! Feeese! Sessee! (Gemma! Jamie! Felix! Cecily! Can you believe they were ALL there?!)

Me: What did you do today?

Skipper: Feese. Hat. Bear. (Felix wore a bear hat? Felix got eaten by a bear wearing a hat? Felix pulled a bear out of a hat? Something like that.)

Me: Hm. Did you go to the park?

Skipper: Park! Seeenhg! (We went to the park and I sat in the swing the entire time and insisted on being pushed, because I'm absolutely obsessed with the swing.)

These are other adorable things:

• The hugs
• The blowing of kisses
• The grins.
• The new words.
• The absorbed extended studying of weird things like a box of paper clips.

This is horrible:

• The screaming.
• The whining.
• The incomprehensible demands followed by screaming and whining.
• The insane sibling-rivalry jealousy, with biting.
• The waking up REALLY early and shrieking "Hongee! Poop!"
• The refusal to eat anything that isn't white or brown.
• The rageful loathing of baths.
• The wriggling, screaming, kicking loathing of diaper changes.

The horrible is exacerbated by the poor kid's eczema, which is currently flaring up and driving her nuts. More nuts.

Anyway, it's just normal 18-month-old misery (I hope) and she'll grow out of it, and then I'll miss her chubby little hands and her delighted pleasure in stomping around in rain boots. But at the moment, I'm very, very tired.

*I find it very satisfying to google exact phrases, like "how could anybody possibly vote for John Boehner for a position requiring any sort of competence or ethics?" and sometimes get relevant answers. It's like the world is answering my questions. Or not.

Spelling

Yesterday Dutch brought home a piece of paper on which she had written, with no help whatsoever, a sentence about what she did this weekend: "I plade with my sesdr."

Every child is unique, like a precious snowflake.

So ... Skipper is a little slow. Not officially - she's totally fine, and falls comfortably into the range of normal. Were not concerned about her development. But she has been, right from the start, slower to hit every developmental milestone than her sister was. I felt, when Skipper was new, that she was taking her time in arriving, while I remember Dutch as being very much HERE from her first breath. Dutch wasn't any sort of super-genius baby or anything, but she ticked off her milestones early or right on time.

Skipper doesn't really talk yet. She has a few semi-recognizable word-esque noises (for hat, dog, and uh-oh, mostly). She says "Hi!" very clearly. Signing for Dutch was a temporary bridge during the short period when she wanted to communicate but couldn't yet talk. Dutch, at this age, was saying quite a few words, and had pretty much left signing totally behind. Because of

this, we've been pretty casual about signing with Skipper - she knows the basics. She uses conventional or invented signs for more, all done, drink, eat, sleep, nurse, cracker, music, tickle, and help. Now I'm thinking it would be useful to learn and to teach her a few more, since the words aren't coming, and she clearly wants to communicate.

Another parent at the daycare today said to me "So, is Skipper walking on her own yet?" and I looked at her in puzzlement. Skipper is nearly 15 months old. She's been walking for 2 months. But I can see why the parent was confused - Skipper is the youngest kid in her daycare classroom by a month, and she's always so far behind the others that it's easy to start thinking of her as being WAY behind.

I look forward to looking back on this* and seeing how her early personality developed into her adult personality. I'd like to think that her unhurried approach to life will translate into a willingness to try new things and make mistakes, which would also differentiate her from her sister. Anyway, Thomas Edison's teacher apparently described him as "addled."

*I do this a lot.

It's probably good to know what silicosis is.

We have long had trouble getting Dutch to sleep. Once you get her to stop talking, she passes out, but that's easier said than done - if she's not allowed to talk to other people, she talks to herself. We have a new trick now, and it's working beautifully. We put on a CD in her room, and she lies quietly and listens to it, and usually falls asleep by the third or fourth track.

What is this magical music, you wonder? It's perfect. It's slow and soporific, but also dramatic. The fun bonus is that Dutch (while awake) occasionally bursts out with dramatic snippets of song: "and I feel like I'm DYING from MINING for GOLD!" or "Misguided angel, love you till I'm DEAD!!"

This is definitely going to increase my site traffic.

Yesterday Dutch and I had The Conversation About Sex. You know, The Conversation. This is how we led up to it. Dutch didn't want to eat her soup. I said she had to eat soup before she could have bread and cheese. She asked me indignantly how I would feel if SHE made ME eat my soup before my bread and cheese. I told her that being an adult means making yourself eat the soup. I mentioned other things, like dental appointments, that I don't like but know I have to do. She said "I know another hard thing! Giving birth!" and I said yes, but that's a little different, and when you choose to get pregnant, giving birth is the only way the baby's coming out. She said, after a minute of thought "You don't want to have any more babies, do you?" and I said no, I will not have any more babies. She said, after several minutes of thought, "You mean you can CHOOSE not to have a baby?" and I said yes. And then she said "How do babies happen?" and I thought "Nooooooo!!!! I'm not ready!" and I got all flushed and shaky.

And then I explained.* I tried not to provide too much or too little information. Fortunately, I escaped having to explain HOW one goes about preventing pregnancy, and we completely left out the notion that people do actually like to have sex even when they don't want babies. We can get to all that later. However, it's also clear that she didn't get all the details nailed down, as she went straight upstairs and told Cook that "men put their penises in women's uteruses!"

Anyway. Later that afternoon, on the way to the library, we walked past a meth house that had been busted and is now closed for decontamination, with big yellow "DANGER" signs posted on the door. So Dutch and I talked about meth.** I wonder what we'll talk about next weekend - domestic program spending freezes?


*Egg, sperm, baby, choice
** Drugs, dangerous, hurtful, choice

Bribe me.

An incentive chart is a poster on which Dutch gets to put a sticker at the end of each day that she keeps her glasses on all day, working toward prizes. If she earns a sticker each of the next four days, for example, she gets to have breakfast with me on Sunday, JUST THE TWO OF US,* at our awesome local cafe, where Dutch will eat bacon, jam, ketchup,** bread, and freshly-squeezed orange juice.

I wish I had an incentive chart. Adulthood is kind of shitty that way. My rewards are erratic, usually unearned, and often entwined with something less lovely, but they are lovely. The sight of Dutch's small, defiant face turned up to me today as we discussed her incentives, with her jutting chin, tangled hair, and lopsidedly magnified right eye peering through those despised glasses, was a reward. When she said that thinking about the bacon "makes my mouth water!" and then said thoughtfully "... I don't actually know what that means," that was a reward, too.

But I'd still like some stickers. And a prize.


*This is a very powerful incentive, because she's so sick of that damn interloping baby.
** That is a very specific list - the ketchup and jam are made in-house, and are delicious, so they have become a central part of the meal, rather than peripheral.

What I learned this weekend...

I spent the weekend in central Oregon, in the company of some lovely extended family, to celebrate the high-school graduation of my youngest cousin, The Napper.

Another cousin, Philosophy Boy, spent some time (late night, fueled by bourbon) dementedly raving about his hatred of "the umlauts in the New Yorker" which initially mystified me and Cook. But a quick visit with the internet revealed that the umlauts are in fact diareses. Yes, diareses. And further pursuit of the diaresis question uncovered a great webpage that seems to have been neglected for years, which is a tragedy.

I'm procrastinating. I appear to be completely burned out for the year, to the extent that I just can't be bothered to finish a paper that's due tomorrow. Or take a shower or do the other things I should do before going to work at 6:30 tomorrow morning. It just doesn't seem all that important, somehow. Unlike diareses. Now, those are important.

Anyway, thanks, family, for the weekend! Nice to meet you, RA! Thanks for taking care of us, Taekwando-Waterfall Uncle and Chipmunk-Nemesis Aunty! And, last and most important, congratulations, Napper! Excellent work in nailing down high school, and good luck with that whole rest-of-your-life thing!